Sybase 12.4.2 - Manual (Page 365)

CHAPTER 9 International Languages and Character Sets
345
For more information, see “Creating a database with a named collation”
on page 346.
When choosing the collation for your database,
• Choose a collation that uses a character set and sort order appropriate for
the data in the database. It is often the case that there are several alternative
collations that meet this requirement, including some that are OEM
collations and some that are ANSI collations.
• There is a performance cost, as well as extra complexity in system
configuration, when you use character set translation. Choose a collation
that avoids the need for character set translation.
You can avoid character set translation by using a collation sequence in the
database that matches the character set in use on your client machine
operating system. In the case of Windows operating systems on the client
machine, choose the ANSI character set.
For information, see “Avoiding character-set translation” on page 338.
Determining locale information
You can determine locale information using system functions.
For a complete list, see the Adaptive Server IQ Reference Manual.
❖ To determine the locale of a database server:
1 Start DBISQL, and connect to a database server.
2 Execute the following statement to determine the database server
character set:
SELECT PROPERTY( ’CharSet’ )
The query returns one of the supported character sets listed in “Character
set labels” on page 326.
3 Execute the following statement to determine the database server
language:
SELECT PROPERTY( ’Language’ )
The query returns one of the supported languages listed in “Language
label values” on page 325.
4 Execute the following statement if you need to determine a good
alternative to the default collation, ISO_BINENG: